Environmental biology of fishes, tập 92, số 1, 2011

Environ Biol Fish (2011) 92:1–12 DOI 10.1007/s10641-011-9809-z Re-use of shallow sediment patches by Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes hexapterus) in Barkley Sound, British Columbia, Canada Trevor B Haynes & Clifford L K Robinson Received: 19 June 2010 / Accepted: 30 March 2011 / Published online: 26 April 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V 2011 Abstract We determined whether, during the summers of 2002–2004, young-of-the-year (YOY) Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes hexapterus) re-used patches of sediment in intertidal and shallow subtidal regions of Barkley Sound, British Columbia, Canada We examined re-use weekly at a single sediment patch in 2003 and 2004 via mark-recapture methods, monthly by re-sampling 15 patches in 2002 and interannually by resampling 36 patches in all years (2002–2004) The mark-recapture results showed that, within each summer, batch marked YOY sand lance re-used the same patch up to weeks later The re-sampling of 15 patches over months in 2002 showed that YOY sand lance consistently occupied patches within a season We found the greatest variability in sediment patch re-use at the interannual time scale with major fluctuations in occurrence and abundance during 2002–2004 The T B Haynes (*) : C L K Robinson Marine Protected Areas Research Group, Geography Department, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada e-mail: t.haynes@sfos.uaf.edu C L K Robinson Parks Canada Agency, Western and Northern Service Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6B 6B4 Present Address: T B Haynes School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775–7220, USA interannual variability in patch re-use is most likely linked to abundance rather than the local or regional environmental characteristics that we examined Keywords Ammodytes hexapterus Distribution Habitat re-use Occurrence Pacific sand lance Site fidelity Temporal variability Introduction Species of the genus Ammodytes, commonly known as sand lance in North America or sandeels in Europe, show a strong spatial association with specific substrates after settlement from the larval stage (Robards et al 1999) Ammodytes species use sediment as a refuge by burying horizontally in the top 4–6 cm (Quinn 1999) at night (Hobson 1986), during the day when they are not foraging in the water column or when they are being pursued by predators (Girsa and Danilov 1976) and during long periods of the winter to conserve energy (Ciannelli 1997) Adaptations, such as lack of a swim bladder, a slender tapered body shape, and the ability to respire interstitial water with low oxygen concentrations, permit sand lance to bury in sandy substrates (Quinn 1999), and even remain buried in the intertidal sediment above the waterline during low tides (Quinn and Schneider 1991) Temporal fluctuations in the abundance and distribution of Ammodytes species have been linked to the productivity and foraging behavior of top predators in temperate coastal food webs (Willson et al 1999) Predators have often been found to be associated with patches of sediment that are important habitat for sand lance For example, aggregations of whiting (Merlangius merlanus) frequently forage in restricted patches of sediment suitable for lesser sandeels (A marinus; Temming et al 2004) Similarly, in coastal British Columbia, marbled murrelets (Brachyramphus marmoratus) have been associated with sandy substrates that are favored by Pacific sand lance (A hexapterus; Yen et al 2004) Further, Minke whales (Balaeonptera acutorostrata) in the Gulf of St Lawrence forage more frequently over sand dunes preferred by Ammodytes species (Naud et al 2003), while the abundance and distribution of American sand lance (A americanus) on Stellwagen Bank off the east coast of the United States have an important effect on the regional distribution and relative abundance of foraging humpback whales (Megaptera novaengliae; Friedlaender et al 2009) The link between the distribution of Ammodytes species and sand habitats is also recognized and exploited by commercial fishers Engelhard et al (2008) noted that the Dogger Bank fishery for lesser sandeels in the North Sea has the distribution of its fine-scale effort closely tied to seabed topographic features, with the fishers concentrating on localized abundances of lesser sandeels at the edges of shallower sandbanks or sand ridges Not all sand substrates are suitable for Ammodytes species Post-settled lesser sandeels in the subtidal waters of the North Sea show a strong preference for medium coarse sands (0.25–2.00 mm median particle size) with very low silt content (0.5 before the nMDS shows ecologically meaningful group separation (Clarke and Gorley 2006) Because both the local and regional nMDS plots based on environmental properties had Global R values near zero, we interpret the ordinations as showing little separation among the three sand lance occurrence groups patches respectively) Seventeen patches did not have sand lance in any of the habitats re-sampled over the years When comparing occurrence among years, 2003 had the highest frequency of patches with sand lance present (Fig 3) The summers of 2002 and 2004 had similar sand lance occurrence, however the same patches were not always used by sand lance in these years We found a significant difference in occurrence among years (Cochran’s Q=10.80, df=2, p=0.005) Post-hoc comparisons showed 2002 and 2004 did not differ significantly from each other (p=1.00), however both had significantly lower frequencies of occurrence compared with 2003 (p=0.01 and p=0.04 respectively) In assessing how local or regional habitat characteristics relate to occurrence, we determined via ANOSIM that the local variable nMDS had a stress value of 0.12, a Global R=0.16, and a p=0.3%, while the regional Table Summary of markrecapture results from the re-sampling of Pacific sand lance that were batch marked in 2003 at Clarke Island Late August Abundance We found a significant difference among years in sand lance abundance when comparing Resample Date Marking Event Date Number of Fish Marked July July 11 Aug 12 Sept June 28 292 0 July 165 NA 0 Aug 350 NA NA Aug 12 289 NA NA NA 470 2715 3600 968 Number of fish checked Environ Biol Fish (2011) 92:1–12 Table Summary of markrecapture results from the re-sampling of Pacific sand lance that were batch marked in 2004 at Clarke Island Resample Date Marking Event Date Number of Fish Marked June June June 23 July July July 22 May 22 323 13 2 June 403 NA 23 48 13 12 June 407 NA NA 47 14 16 June 23 245 NA NA NA 17 5 July 373 NA NA NA NA 15 14 July 749 NA NA NA NA NA 14 922 1760 1035 4190 2650 1820 Number of fish checked among all sites (Friedman test; Chi-square=13.34, df=2, p=0.001) The post-hoc comparison of mean abundance showed 2003 had a higher mean abundance (890±2445 sand lance) than 2002 (169±736 sand lance; Z=−2.978, p=0.003) and 2004 (42±132 sand lance; Z=−2.656, p=0.008) but 2002 and 2004 did not differ from each other (Z=−0.057, p=0.995) When comparing among sites where sand lance were consistently found each year, 2003 had the highest abundance (1956±3409 sand lance) followed by 2002 (709±1613 sand lance) and 2004 (119±189 sand lance), however, this difference was not statistically significant (Friedman test; Chi-square=3.714, df=2, p= 0.156) Also, mean sand lance abundances from 2003 did not differ significantly between sediment patches that had had sand lance present consistently compared with patches that had variable interannual use (U=24.0, Z=−1.02 p=0.343) Fig Percentage of marked Pacific sand lance recaptured per every 100 fish checked over time in 2004 Individual lines represent specific batch marking events with the point before the start of a line series representing the marking event (e.g square points represent recaptured fish marked on 3-Jun) The first batch of fish was marked on May 22 (diamonds) Discussion This is the first study to examine the re-use of intertidal and shallow subtidal sediment patches by Ammodytes at fine spatial scales ([...]... Atlantic): the influence of exposure and benthic composition João Paulo Krajewski & Sergio R Floeter Received: 7 January 2010 / Accepted: 4 April 2011 / Published online: 27 April 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V 2011 Abstract We studied the reef fish assemblage of eight reefs within the oceanic archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, off northeastern Brazil In a total of 91 belt transects (20×2... composition of parent fish Nippon Suisan Gakkaishi 32:393–398 Hamada T (1967) Studies on fluctuation in the abundance of larval sand-lance in the Harima-nada and Osaka-Bay 4 Relation between the number of eggs and the catch of 0-age fish Nippon Suisan Gakkaishi 33:410–416 Haynes TB (2006) Modeling habitat use of Young -of- the-Year Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes hexapterus) in the nearshore region of Barkley... the comparison of the reef fish community structure of these two oceanic islands provides a unique opportunity to understand how habitat structure may shape the community of tropical isolated reefs Here we conduct the first assessment of the fish assemblage in different reef habitats of Fernando de Noronha The main goals of this study are to describe the reef fish community structure of the archipelago... appeared to be influenced by the environmental variables the same way as fish density However, the biomass of omnivores increased with exposure, while the biomass of mobile invertebrate feeders and roving herbivores were not highly correlated with any of the environmental variables (Fig 3, Table 3) Environ Biol Fish (2011) 92:25–40 31 Table 2 Marginal and conditional effects of depth, exposure and benthic... was used in this study to derive new sets of variables (principal components or PCs) for each of the abundance of fish (F), algae (A), and invertebrates (I), and physical factors (P) The new variables, equal in number to original variables within each group, however the first PC derived for each group (i.e., F1, A1, P1 and I1) explains the greatest amount of variance inherent in the original group’s... American Society of Civil Engineers: 1572–1585 Moring JR (1990a) Seasonal absence of fishes in tidepools of a boreal environment (Maine, USA) Hydrobiologia 194:163–168 Moring JR (1990b) Marking and tagging intertidal fishes: a review of techniques In: Parker NC et al (eds) Fish-marking techniques American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, pp 109–116 Moring JR (1993) Check list of the tidepool fishes of Maine Maine... (1986) Abundance of macrofauna in dense seagrass is due to habitat preference, not predation Oecologia 68:1432–1939 Bell JD, Steffe AS, Westoby M (1988) Location of seagrass beds in estuaries: effects on associated fish and decapods J Exp Mar Biol Ecol 122:127–146 Environ Biol Fish (2011) 92:1–12 Byers MM (2001) The ecology of age-1 copper rockfish (Sebastes caurinus) in vegetated habitats of Sitka Sound,... 92:25–40 oceanic islands are an example of such structurally and biologically simple reef habitats, since they usually harbour only a fraction of the reef fish community of most of the Brazilian coastal reefs and have a relatively smaller reef area As a consequence, the study of reef fish communities in these islands may provide important information regarding the identity of fish species managing to live... mechanism is unknown, recruitment of sand lance is likely affected by a combination of both oceanographic and environmental conditions during the larval stage and population dynamics (Arnott and Ruxton 2002) We did not detect any significant differences in the environmental characteristics of sediment patches classified by YOY sand lance occurrence Hence, the re-use of a sediment patch at the interannual... exposure, depth and benthic composition We further investigate the degrees of association of the dominant species on the community with the studied environmental variables and also compare the structure of the reef fish community of Fernando de Noronha with Atol das Rocas and the Abrolhos reefs (NE Brazilian coast) Environ Biol Fish (2011) 92:25–40 Materials and methods Study sites The study was conducted